Big projected turnout means it’s all hands on deck for the general election

By Marisa Demarco

On Election Day, Bernalillo County usually needs 2,500 poll workers—a one-day, 14-hour job that could arguably be among the most important in the democratic process. This year, the county will need 3,000, minimum.

Wind customers shouldn’t pay for other energy costs

By Jim Scarantino

Like the current state of technology for electric car batteries, altruism can take us only so far in moving our economy to new forms of energy. Economic carrots and sticks have more control over our energy future than good intentions.

A common myth about Bigfoot—the huge, hairy, unknown beast reported by many but rarely if ever photographed—is that there’s only one of them. But, of course, if it’s a real animal, the creatures must have a large enough breeding population to survive through generations. There’s gotta be a boy Bigfoot and a girl Bigfoot, and after some sort of ritualized courtship (possibly involving gift-giving and/or a handful of warm poo), they do the Horizontal Bigfoot Love Dance and then we have a Bigfoot baby.

DATELINE: New Zealand—Hundreds of thousands of dollars in cameras and equipment were lost by media members after a boat sank at a ceremony designed to send off the country’s Olympic rowing team. No one died or was seriously injured in the incident, and the seven journalists and boat pilot—all wearing lifejackets—were plucked from the frigid water of Lake Karapiro. New Zealand Herald photographer Sarah Ivey told the story in her own newspaper: “There was just water gushing in over the front like something out of Titanic and all of a sudden I was up to my knees in it,” she reported. “Everyone was screaming and swearing ... but mostly everyone was shouting, Oh hell, I’ve lost my lens or Oh hell, I’ve got to get my camera out of the water.” A New Zealand spokesperson has promised an investigation into the incident, as the boat employed in transporting the media members should have been capable of holding 12 without fear of capsizing, and stated that divers would attempt to retrieve the missing equipment. Said Ivey, “It would have been the World Press Photo of the Year—all the photographers trying to keep their gear up in the air—but no one could take the picture.”

[Warning: spoiler alert] I thoroughly enjoyed 2005’s Batman Begins. But I’m bewildered by the apparent love affair with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. This new film is truly a Batman for the Bush/Cheney era. One minute our Caped Crusader is flying off to Hong Kong to perform extraordinary sedition, the next he’s dropping a man off a high rise and breaking his ankles to interrogate him.